There I was at EFY, kind of in heaven, because they had
announced a poetry contest. And I wrote
poetry. I could rhyme like the best of them! (Looking back, I was probably
writing more verse than real poetry, but hey. It worked for me. And lots of
people loved the things I wrote, so that’s all I cared about).
I knew that I just had to enter the contest. The theme was
Walk With Me. I thought about it and thought about it. I sat down at the desk
in the dorm room, and I thought and attempted some lines. I crossed out what I
had written and started over so many times it was just crazy. Where was my poem? I knew there was one,
I just needed to pull it out of myself.
That night in my prayers I asked (probably begged, I was a
teenager, after all) Heavenly Father to help me find my poem. Then I asked him
to help me write his poem. It would be his, after all. And then I went
to bed, with hopes for better writing tomorrow.
In the middle of the night I woke up. To this day I can
still remember getting out of bed and sitting at that desk. The lamp was on,
the world was quiet. I was probably still half asleep. But I sat there and the
words just flowed out of the pen like nothing else I had ever experienced.
Almost 30 years later I can still remember that night, crystal clear.
The next morning I got up, and having remembered writing in
the middle of the night, I went to the desk and read the paper. It was by far
the best poem I had ever written. Hands down. I wrote out a nice copy and
turned it in to the contest that day. My
name was listed as the author, but there has never been any doubt in my mind
that it was Heavenly Father’s poem. It was an experience I will never, ever
forget.
Do I even need to say it? That poem won first place. To this
day, that was one of the coolest experiences in my entire life.
No comments:
Post a Comment